George Duke wrote on Wed, Sep 17, 2008 04:24 PM UTC:
''The Laws of Chess'' govern FIDE play. Mere rules ad infinitum galvanise
peculiar field of chess variants. Chess variant artists frankly enjoy their pastime rather as do likeminded addicts to orthogonal basketweaving
or needlepointing. In their subculture, off-chess prolificists think
nothing of re-use without attribution and outright plagiarism. It's the
nature of their game, self-absorbed and unable to stop concatenating new
chains. Why not instead spend 2 months only critiqueing preexisting work
of others? Why not actually playing fully 20 scores of the individual's
chosen favourite? Out of the question for these self-annointed
artist-specialists. Rather than another slightly-different or enlarged
copycat, what about definition as to when ''new'' game is
tantamount to equivalence with pre-existing ''CV''? Or create strict hierarchy of preference within a class? (Class Ultima, Rococo,
Maxima, Optima, Fugue, Stupid would be one of hundreds of examples, all needing and a few worthy of some organization.) Prolificists
are not interested in fine-point definition or analysis. After all, theirs is an *Art*, and unusually one not without intimidation against
nonbelievers(who would comprise 99% of the world's billion Chess players). Now
each prolific designer has particular style. ''CharlesGilman'' uses no
formal Identification, so comments purportedly cannot be held to account or
checked for consistency. Joe Joyce's includes contempt for
historicity. He says that whether form or piece were once employed even decades ago is irrelevant to right of immediate self-expression in still one more personal set of rules without standards.